The United States has warned Pakistan it wants urgent action against militants in its tribal regions following last week's failed Times Square car bombing in New York, the New York Times reported on Saturday. Citing US and Pakistani officials.
The Times reported on its website that General Stanley McChrystal, the US military commander in Afghanistan, met Pakistani military chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani on Friday and urged that Pakistan hasten the start of a military offensive against the Taliban and al Qaeda in North Waziristan.
Officials with knowledge of the visit who spoke on the condition of anonymity characterised Washington's ramped up pressure as a sharp turnaround from the Obama administration's relatively restrained approach of encouragement in recent months, the Times reported.
A US official was quoted by the Times as saying Kayani was told, "You can't pretend any longer that this is not going on,'" the newspaper quoted one US official as saying. "We are saying you have got to go into North Waziristan.'" Another official, referring to the highly sensitive prospect of US ground troops within Pakistan, was quoted as saying, "We are saying, 'Sorry, if there is a successful attack, we will have to act'" inside Pakistan.
Earlier, the United States has warned of "severe consequences" if a successful extremist attack in America were traced back to Pakistan, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes." "We've gotten more co-operation. It's been a real sea change in the commitment we have seen from the Pakistani government. We want more, we expect more," Clinton said in the interview to be aired on Sunday. Excerpts were released on Friday.
"We've made it very clear that if - heaven-forbid - an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences," she said, without elaborating. Some analysts have speculated that if the Pakistani Taliban were involved in the Times Square plot, it could be responding to US drone attacks that have killed militants hiding in Pakistan as well as civilians.
"We also have a much better relationship, military to military, intelligence to intelligence, government to government than we had before," Clinton said. "I think that there was a double game going on in the previous years, where we got a lot of lip service but very little produced." "We've got a lot produced. We have seen the killing or capturing of a great number of the leadership of significant terrorist groups and we're going (to) continue that," she said in the interview.